The present invention relates generally to a sales method, a sales system, sales processing apparatus, and a terminal apparatus for a plurality of servers to cooperatively sell articles demanded by users.
These days, so-called Internet shopping is becoming increasingly common. In operation, a user as a purchaser, accesses a shopping site on the Internet through his personal computer connected thereto. The user executes a predetermined operation to select a desired article on a page of the accessing site as displayed on a Web browser screen. Then, the user executes a predetermined operation for determining an article to buy and enters predetermined such items for payment procedure as personal information including user's name and address and payment preference.
Also, in addition to the sale of tangibles, the sale of intangibles such as automobile insurance is becoming popular in Internet shopping. Given this background, chances would increase in which users buy both intangibles and tangibles at the same time.
Currently, however, users must access separate Internet sites to buy intangibles and tangibles. For example, if a user wants to buy an intangible and an associated tangible, the user must access a site which sells intangibles and conclude the payment agreements for the purchase and then access a site which sells tangibles by following links for example and conclude the payment agreements for the purchase, entering all required information through his personal computer every time the access is made. This gives the users a lot of time and trouble in purchasing combinations of intangibles and tangibles. In addition, the payment agreements for example must be separately managed for intangibles and tangibles.